Minister of State for Education Anisa Zeb Tahirkheli said on Sunday that seminaries in Pakistan were to be encouraged as they were playing a very positive role in imparting religious and scientific education to students, especially those from remote areas.
In an exclusive interview with APP she lauded the contributions and services of Deeni Madaris for imparting cheap education to the poor segment of society and said that the government wanted to streamline these institutions for the benefit of students.
"The role of these seminaries is to be streamlined to integrate religious education with formal educational system and bridge the gulf between the two parallel systems of education", she said.
The minister said on this front, the government was successfully progressing and subjects like mathematics, computer science and English were to be incorporated to the syllabus to bring the students of the seminaries at par with those of government institutions.
About the curricula reforms, she said curriculum development was an ongoing process to respond to the global challenges and emerging trends and added that efforts were underway to make it vibrant and responsive to the development of individual as well as the society.
Anisa said that the existing scheme of study was also being reviewed to make the learning in schools more effective.
She said that she looked after President's Education Sector Reforms which emphasised the provision of education for all school age children and it plans to achieve 76 percent net primary enrolment by 2006.
She said that in the FY06 initially an amount of Rs 900 million was allocated for President's Education Sector Reforms Programme which had been enhanced to Rs 1,757.76 million to meet the additional requirements of provincial and district governments.
Anisa said the government was sincere in its efforts to improve the condition of educational buildings and provide missing facilities there and for this purpose she said the budget for the education sector would be increased by 4 percent of the GDP.
The minister said the National Education Census was underway to ensure that the national database was systematically updated by incorporating information of all categories of educational institutions in the country.
She said so far, 97.35 percent institutions had been covered and draft tabulation had been prepared and approved, and the project would be completed by June 30, 2006.
When asked about the role of the schools in private sectors, she said these institutions were contributing a lot to promoting quality education. She, however, said a Regulatory Authority had been approved by the Cabinet to monitor and further improve the performance of these private schools.
She said that quality of education would be improved to groom the students according to the requirements of modern time. She said it was unfortunate that there had been a greater increase in facilities for general education as compared to technical and vocational education.
About general elections to be held in 2007, she said that these would be held as per constitution of the country.
Comments
Comments are closed.